adesso awarded EUR 2.4 million follow-up order by GEMA

Dortmund | 8. January 2018

adesso AG has been awarded a fourth agile fixed-price project by the Society for Musical Performance and Mechanical Reproduction Rights (GEMA – Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte): The MAVI project will involve adesso adapting the in-house development MARS to GEMA’s new system environment, which is currently being established. The project has a term of 20 months and a contract volume of EUR 2.4 million.

For approximately three years, GEMA has been modernising its existing software systems according to a sophisticated roadmap, called VISTA, to achieve an overall system architecture that meets its future needs. Over the next two years, further legacy systems will be successively replaced by new developments. adesso is supporting GEMA in the implementation of this ambitious modernisation programme as an IT service partner.

The new project, MAVI, is part of the GEMA roadmap and involves a ten-person interdisciplinary team of developers from adesso working together with GEMA’s IT subsidiary, IT4IPM GmbH, until the end of 2019 to adapt the new MARS system, which was developed for GEMA by adesso, to the system environment. That will involve replacing 16 peripheral systems with new, modernised systems by the end of the project period. The MARS system was developed and supplied in cooperation with IT4IPM GmbH at the end of 2016 to efficiently support core business processes in the areas of live music and radio at GEMA: from the reporting of music usage to the allocation to a work version and preparation for the distribution of royalties.

adesso is ideally placed to handle the upcoming adaptation of the MARS system to new and existing peripheral systems: adesso is familiar with every aspect of MARS and knows what effects have to be taken into account as a result of changes to its individual functions. Those adaptations can result in the migration of processes to MARS from peripheral systems and vice versa, and the overall movement of partial system boundaries. The parallel operation of old and new components during transitional periods also has to be ensured.

Dr. Markus Grimm, CIO of GEMA comments: “Considering all the challenges on the path to our new GEMA roadmap, the choice of adesso as a partner was clear: Thanks to our cooperation over a number of years, adesso is familiar with our specialisms and is well placed to assess our highly complex IT environment.”

adesso project manager Gregor Böhme emphasises the advantages of long-term cooperation: “To date we have successfully carried out numerous larger and smaller partial IT projects for GEMA. That means we have a very good network in the organisation, with short, direct channels of communication to the relevant contacts.”